Jonathan Comey: Belichick owes us his honest thoughts about Hernandez

Whether we like it or not, Bill Belichick doesn't owe the media or the fans more information about internal Patriots business than he chooses to share.

Whether we like it or not, Bill Belichick doesn't owe the media or the fans more information about internal Patriots business than he chooses to share.

It's a right he's earned with his success in New England, and it's also been proven to be a fairly sound business practice. After all, there's no such thing as a controversy when no one knows something controversial is happening. Other organizations put out fires; Belichick just lets them smolder behind closed doors.

But, when Belichick faces Patriots Nation again, sometime in the near future, with his first press conference since the Aaron Hernandez arrest, he does owe something: his thoughts about Hernandez, as honestly and as passionately as he can deliver them.

I hope it's a debt that won't go unpaid.

Owner Bob Kraft's sit-down with the media earlier this week revealed some of what the organization is thinking. So did the team's well-publicized exchange program for Hernandez jerseys. The team didn't just cut ties with Hernandez, they erased them, decisively and definitively.

On a relative scale, it's a good thing for them that this sad drama is taking place during the slowest part of the NFL season, when there's time to reflect and recharge. Few events in NFL history have been so difficult to digest.

And so, when training camp opens on July 25 and Belichick takes the podium, he'll have had enough time to figure it out. There's been a lot of soul searching at Gillette Stadium, and certainly a long series of internal meetings with lawyers and team officials about what can be said and what can't be said.

It's understood that there will be limits on his speech. But that's not an excuse for silence.

Every team knows they have players that can and will get into trouble — the arrest of cornerback Alfonzo Dennard this week is a reminder of that. But no team, ever, expects to be employing an indicted murderer.

The history of pro sports is thick with the stories of athletes overcoming their demons, or at the very least exceeding in spite of them. At their core, sporting programs are there to keep kids from trouble, teach them to come together around a common goal, equip them with life skills.

Coaches are teachers, and sports is redemption, the reward for overcoming those demons. The players that make the NFL don't just have talent, they have immeasurable drive, commitment and charisma. They face pressure that those who dismiss it as "just a game" won't ever care to understand.

Bill Belichick has coached so many men who have played just beyond the reach of the problems that chased them. Lawrence Taylor. Randy Moss. He has coached so many men that turned their negatives into positives. Richard Seymour. Troy Brown. Tedy Bruschi. Tom Brady.

In all of those cases, it wasn't just football that Belichick cared about. It was making those men see that they had a chance to make the most of their lives in ways that a thousand other men couldn't, and that it was important.

Belichick isn't a popular figure in football circles, but in his inner circle? He is beloved. And he's beloved for the qualities we don't see — the small kindnesses, the ego-less passion for the game, the enduring love for his children, the words, actions and deeds that make millionaire football players play just a little bit harder for him.

We need to see that version.

Belichick needs to take that podium, and in his first breath, address the Hernandez situation with bared soul. No waiting for the press to ask questions that he won't answer, no glib remarks, just the truth as well as he can state it.

Tell us that pro athletes are some of the most complicated, yet simplest men on the earth. Tell us that you feel heartbroken for Hernandez's little daughter, that you're bewildered by all of it. Tell us that you worry about guns, and drugs, and the role that they play in young men's lives.

Share with us any of those conflicting emotions that have been bubbling inside you for the last two months and the last four decades, the things that have filled your dream job with small nightmares and countered joy with pain.

Let us see the man under the hoodie, just for a second.

Will Belichick do that? Perhaps not quite in that way, but I do expect that he will spend significant time addressing the issue, on his own terms (even if follow-up questions are met with the more traditional non-answers we're used to).

Time has proven Belichick to be an excellent decision maker; his empire has been built on making more good choices than the other guys, and on facing bad choices with clarity.

His legacy as a football man is well-earned. and the actions of his star tight end should have no bearing on that.

But when it comes to Belichick's reaction, it's so important to his real, human legacy, that anything but the right choice will be a real disappointment.

Let's hope he makes the right one.

Jonathan Comey is sports and features editor for The Standard-Times. Email him at jcomey@s-t.com